India’s Savers Turn to Investing
April 15, 2008 at 5:20 am | In business, insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: investment, market, Mutual Funds, shares
Its time to turn around the stock market and earn a piece of money from share market.Read this story of a guy in BHOPAL, India —– Twenty-six-year-old science graduate Kranti Pawar is the son of a farmer and makes a living by hiring out a machine that digs irrigation channels. Business is booming, he says, and so are his material aspirations. He wants an air-conditioned car and a flat-screen plasma TV soon. But his bank account is not up to the task.
So in January, he invested the equivalent of about $1,000 in mutual funds for the first time, joining a new trend in an Indian middle class that has traditionally put its money in safe but slowly expanding bank accounts. Better, many people are saying now, to go for mutual funds, which have produced returns as high as 35 percent over the past two years.
But within a month of his investment, the long-climbing Indian stock market started going south, reflecting slumps around the world.
“My father said I should be content with what I get” from savings accounts, said Pawar, recalling his parent’s dictate against mutual funds. But he was young and willing to take risks to get rich. So far, it hasn’t paid off. Since January, the Indian stock market has fallen by about 23 percent, and equity mutual funds are down about 28 percent.
“As the proverb goes,” he observed, ” ‘As soon as I shaved my head, it hailed.’ I am a little worried, but I am not getting out because India is bound to grow and this fall is temporary.” He is staying in even though he has to duck his father’s frequent “I told you so.”
Pawar is among hundreds of thousands of Indians who are nervously watching their investments after giving in to the fast-buck lure of equity mutual funds, a nascent Indian industry that grew by 45 percent last year, or about 40 million accounts.
For five years, the funds did well, helped along by an economy growing at nearly 8 percent a year, more jobs, higher incomes, falling interest rates paid by bank accounts, a dizzying climb of capital markets and a nation where two-thirds of the population is younger than 35.
India’s total assets under management grew 772 percent between 2004 and 2007 but dipped about 3 percent in the past three months.
There have been few panic withdrawals so far, but the number of new investors has slowed. Mutual fund companies are rushing to counsel nervous investors against selling and telling them to learn to live with risk.
Indians have traditionally been good at saving. A 2007 joint study by the National Council for Applied Economic Research and the insurance company Max New York Life found that about 81 percent of Indian households did so regularly, with more than half keeping their surplus income in bank accounts and a third simply stashing cash savings at home.
“Traditionally, you were looked down upon in India if you wanted to get rich quick. But that mind-set is now changing,” said A.P. Kurian, chairman of the Association of Mutual Funds in India. “Indians now want to climb the ladder of life quickly, and there is nothing wrong with it. This is the way the world lives.”
A report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. says India’s asset management industry is growing faster than those of developed economies such as the United States and Britain and emerging markets such as Brazil.
“It is hard to ignore the phenomenon of mutual funds with so many TV programs and newspaper columns on the subject. There is an explosion of interest, and this is just the beginning,” said Awadesh Singh, regional manager for Ski Retail Capital in the central Indian city of Bhopal. His customers, who include the new investor Pawar, get message alerts on their cellphones every two weeks about the value of their investments.
India’s first mutual fund company, the government-guaranteed Unit Trust of India (UTI), started in 1963. But it was only in 1993 that the government here allowed private companies into the industry. In 1996, officials drafted a strict and elaborate regulatory mechanism that governs the industry, including requirements for full disclosure of net asset worth and detailed offering documents.
But the real boom began only five years ago, when the industry launched an all-out campaign to wean the Indian middle class away from conservative, risk-averse savings. Between 2004 and 2007, television advertisements for mutual fund companies grew fivefold, according to TAM Media Research. The ads are governed by a long list of rules that include disclosure of risk factors and a ban on the use of celebrity promoters.
“In 2004, the mutual funds phenomenon was restricted to the top 10 Indian cities, but now it has expanded its presence and penetration in the markets of 30 Indian cities,” said Ashu Suyash, country head for Fidelity Fund Management, which started its Indian mutual funds division in 2005 and now has 1.5 million investors. “Mutual funds are now replacing investments in government bonds and deposits that were earlier considered safe.”
Although the markets have now steadied somewhat, the slowdown remains a challenge for people like Pawar. He is watching the slump anxiously. He recently sent an instruction to his agent: “Don’t send me bad news text message alerts every fortnight. Send me a message only when there is good news again.”
Be honest with life insurance companies
April 15, 2008 at 5:06 am | In insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: insurance, life insurance
insured hides a fact which is material to the assumption of risk by the insurers, and it comes to light at a later date, the life insurance company may cancel the policy or reject the claim, depending on the circumstances.
Pay your ICICI Prudential Life Premium via Airtel Mobile Phone
April 15, 2008 at 4:01 am | In insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: Airtel, ICICI insurance premium, ICICI prudential
A right move by ICICI Prudential .Now you can pay your premium by your Airtel phones.Cool facility for the customers.ICICI is very good in customer satisfaction.
ICICI has now made payments for its ICICI prudential customers easy. Customers can now pay their premiums through their mobile phones from wherever they are and at any time.
The company has joined hands with the mChek, a Visa certified secure and simple system which helps the customers to pay their premium payments by sending a text message of the card number to the company, which then processes the payment.
This is the first life insurance company in India which allows its policy holders to make their payments via mobile phones. Initially this service has been made available only to Airtel users across the country.
Anita Pai, Executive Vice President, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance commented, “At ICICI Prudential customer-first is one of our core philosophies, which guides us to introduce innovative, yet simple products and services that meet the customer needs and delight them by increasing their convenience.”
She further added, “Our partnership with mChek is yet another step in the direction of making customer interactions convenient and effortless. Through the launch of this unique service we are pleased to set another new trend in the life insurance segment.”
Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek stated, “mChek was conceived with the objective of providing Anytime Anywhere convenience in payments, to mobile phone users. We are pleased to extend our service portfolio to include insurance premiums by working with an industry leader like ICICI Prudential Life.”
Visa and Mastercards are accepted by this service. All transaction application meets stringent, international standards of security and customers are safe by their unique mChek PIN.
Also, encrypted end-to-end with 3DES encryption ensures banking-grade security from the convenience of a mobile phone.
what do you think of the facility.weather it is an usefull or useless.
Buy a LG Mobile Phone and get Free Insurance for Your Handset
April 15, 2008 at 3:54 am | In insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: free insurance, LG mobile phone, mobile phone, nokia
There is a special offer for the LG buyers .Found to be a 
If you are planning to buy a LG mobile in the near future, then you will be happy to find out that there will be a free insurance scheme that you can avail of for mobile theft. LG Electronics has joined hands with United India Insurance Co. Ltd and is now offering its in India a Mobile Theft Insurance Plan without having to pay anything additional.
Any LG GSM phones purchased on or after 1st April 2008 can avail of the additional insurance scheme. There have been several requests by mobile users and finally their requests are answered by LG.
Anil Arora, Business Group Head, LGEIL said, “Loss of mobile due to theft is a major concern for handset buyers. Customers stretch their budget to purchase latest handsets, and cannot afford to lose them. LG Mobile Theft Insurance plan would provide a perfect solution to this. We not only guarantee for providing the best phones in the market but also guarantee to safeguard customer’s interest in case of mobile theft.”
To avail the free insurance scheme, the mobile user has to follow a few simple steps:
It is always advisable that the mobile user blocks the SIM card from the mobile network provider and to add in documents of proof, the mobile user also has to lodge a FIR within 24 hours of the theft. Certain LG GSM mobile phones feature LG’s Anti Theft Mobile Tracker (ATMT) and this enables one to track their stolen mobile phone, as soon as another SIM card is inserted.
However if the ATMT fails to track the handset, then LG will pay back the current market value of the phone and the claim settlement will be done directly by the insurace company within 15 days of receipt of the claim as per the insurance.
How to Successfully Market Yourself as a Car Insurance Agent
April 15, 2008 at 2:24 am | In insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: insurance
I wonder some times how this guys being a insurance agent and earning a hell a lot of money.After reading this article in the net i found it great easy to make money using the insurance companies that too in part time.
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April 14, 2008 Becoming a successful car insurance agent has a lot to do with the marketing plan that you have in place. If this is something that you take seriously, you will find that your business is growing at a higher pace than ever before. Of course, if you think that marketing is for the birds, you will find it difficult to get your business off the ground. The question is: how can you successfully market yourself as a car insurance agent? Believe it or not, this is not as hard as some agents make it out to be. The first thing that you need to do is take a strong look at what you have done in the past. This will give you an idea of if what you have been doing is working, and what you can change in the future. With the help of the internet, any car insurance agent should be able to implement a successful marketing plan. First things first, you can set up a website with which potential consumers can find information on you, your services, and how to get in touch. This will go a long way in increasing the number of people that you reach. Additionally, you can also market your car insurance services by purchasing leads online. This is not marketing in a traditional sense, but once you purchase leads you will then be able to turn your attention more towards the marketing side of things. More and more agents are buying leads because it allows them to skip over the difficult task of locating them on their own. The better you are at marketing yourself, the more car insurance policies you will sell. For a limited time, QuotesAuction.com is offering $200 worth of free leads to agents who setup and activate an account. Go to https://www.quotesauction.com/sign-up.htmto learn more. |
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“Compulsory car insurance good idea – Clark”-Quite late
April 14, 2008 at 5:07 pm | In insurance, nivash | Leave a CommentTags: car insurance vechicle insurance, insurance
Some countries made the Car and vechicle insurance a must when buying a car quite a long back time.But some country it is now only coming into prevelance.Prime Minister Helen Clark says compulsory third-party insurance for all drivers is a good idea.
The Government will decide before the election whether to introduce compulsory third-party insurance in a bid to crackdown on boyracers.
It announced last year it was putting together a discussion paper to gauge public opinion on the issue.
Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven yesterday said that paper would be out in the next few weeks.
The consultation would be completed in time to allow Cabinet to make a decision before the election.
Helen Clark today said the idea was a good one, but it needed to be tested against the public’s views.
“I’m personally inclined to think that idea has a lot of merit, but it’s got to be properly explored,” she said on NewstalkZB.
Insurance companies have criticised the proposal, saying it would be hard to enforce as the worst drivers had already been refused insurance and many drove without a license.
But Mr Duynhoven yesterday said he had been getting extremely positive feedback over the idea.
“I’ve had just a large number of people phoning in, writing in, just bowling up to me in the street,” he told NZPA.
“These are people I’ve never seen or met before coming up to me and saying ‘we’ve got to do that’.
“So it’s got very good feedback. But we want to get people’s ideas formally, of course.
New Zealand was one of the only developed countries not to have such legislation and he was confident of convincing his Cabinet colleagues of its merits, he said.
The cost of uninsured motorists was between $53 million and $85m a year.
Under a compulsory scheme, young, novice and accident prone drivers paid higher premiums.
Steeper premiums on higher performance vehicles could encourage drivers to opt for less powerful vehicles, Mr Duynhoven said.
He expected the discussion document to be out in the “next few weeks”.
Life insurance profit growth falls
April 14, 2008 at 5:03 pm | In insurance | Leave a CommentTags: business, insurance, life insurance
I found many people are not that Aware of the Importance of the insurance So i thought of blogging about the insurance and its importance .Some of the happenings of the insurance field are Blogged below .Life insurance confidence remained strong in the first quarter of 2008, despite slowing business fundamentals, the latest Ernst & Young Insurance financial services index shows.
This strong confidence was measured despite sharply slower investment income growth, and rising growth in policy surrenders, Ernst & Young says.
This is the 19th quarterly survey conducted to measure confidence in the life insurance industry. Life insurance confidence is now the strongest of all financial services sectors, ahead of the banking industry (78 points), and investment management confidence (77 index points).
“The other sectors of the financial services sector are reporting significantly weaker confidence on the back of declining economic fundamentals.
“Although life insurers remain so confident in their outlook, we noticed that in the banking and investment management sectors, a few quarters of negative fundamentals typically precedes declining confidence,” says Tim Rutherford, insurance industry spokesperson at Ernst & Young.
While premium income growth held up well in the first quarter, investment income turned sharply downwards in the first quarter of 2008. This had a direct impact on bottom line profitability.
“The last few years have been good for the life insurance market largely through rising equity markets, which have resulted in strong and growing levels of investment income.
“But global market turmoil, coupled with our own less favourable economic prospects locally, has brought an end to boom investment income earnings. In fact, investment income earnings turned negative in the quarter, implying contracting investment income earnings,” says Rutherford.
Other findings illustrate that slightly slower premium income growth was accompanied by slowing new business premium growth.
“Whilst there was not a significant drop in premium income growth in the latest quarter, if we look at the levels of growth recorded in early 2007, and compare that with current growth levels, there is definitely a slowdown in the pace at which the industry is attracting premiums.
“For a while now, life insurers have seen investors switching their investments out of contractual savings into collective investments.
“That placed some pressure on premium growth, but the industry worked hard to offset these losses. 2007 was a particularly good year for premiums, but it now appears that general economic pressures on consumers are leading to premiums being squeezed once again.
“We also notice that lapse rates are declining, which should be a boost for life insurers. However, what we are seeing is that policyholders are surrendering policies to a greater extent than they were in the past.
“The reason for this is the agreement between National Treasury and the life insurance industry, (implemented in 2007). This makes it more worthwhile for policyholders to surrender a policy, rather than let it lapse, as they get a payment in exiting the policy, which was not necessarily the case in the past.
“If anything, declining lapses, coupled with rising surrenders leads to greater outflows for life insurers. This definitely affects the cost of doing business, and is not therefore a positive for the sector,” Rutherford adds.
The survey also found that profits came under pressure in the first quarter of 2008, with growth in outflows considerably in excess of inflows.
“We notice that the first quarter of 2007 also saw a strong slump in profits growth, so there could be seasonal factors playing a role in such a sharp downturn in profit growth. But unlike the first quarter of 2007, there is a considerable fall-off in investment income growth, which looks likely to hold into the next few quarters, and thereby squeeze profits growth,” Rutherford says.
“Although life insurance industry confidence remains strong, the underlying economic fundamentals and life insurance index indicators suggest that life insurers prospects may not be in sync with their confidence levels. We expect, as is the case with the banking and investment management sectors, that declining economic fundamentals will lead to lower confidence in the quarters ahead.
The life insurance sector lagged its other financial services peers in confidence levels for quite a while in 2004 to 2006, and we may simply be seeing an extension of this trend,” he concludes.
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